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fennel spiced tofu bolognese // 15-min fauxlognese

fennel spiced tofu bolognese // 15-min fauxlognese

If there’s one thing I crave every time we take a turn for chillier weather (fine.uh.lee.), it’s pasta. Red sauced, finished with a slick of glossy butter and studded generously with little braised bits of short rib or piggy things — or draped lazily around tender meatballs or glistening crumbles of spiced sausage. Praise the lord. It gets me every time. And if we’re telling stories (when are we not?), at least once a year I’ll be standing in line at the market when I catch a glimpse of unapologetically sexy meatballs on the cover of a food glossy and I’ve got to hop out of line and restock my basket accordingly.

This. Is weeknight pasta. Red and saucy, indeed, but by all means lighter and simpler — and a little less environmentally intensive than its mootiful counterpart. Though, tofu being a soy product, I suppose even that is somewhat debatable. But we’ll save that conversation for another day. Today we’ll just leave it at this: crumbled tofu, sausage-y spices, jarred marinara and bright herbs.

Add marinara and cook until warmed through. Serve over hot pasta with a generous drizzle of olive oil, fresh basil and more crushed red pepper over the top. Enjoy!

Notes

I love this meal for weeknights, in particular, since the sauce comes together in about the time it takes to boil a pot of pasta -- so long as you've frozen and thawed the tofu in advance. Doing so changes the texture of the tofu completely and allows you to extract an extraordinary amount of liquid before browning it for the sauce.

Also, if you're looking to make this a fully vegan meal, I like orechiette pasta in place of the eggy papardelle! 🙂

14 Comments on “fennel spiced tofu bolognese // 15-min fauxlognese”

I always crave pasta. And I am one of those people that treats it as a healthy meal, of course if you load it with piles of cream and cheese it’s not so healthy anymore, but it’s the sauce, not the pasta that is bad. I love this sauce, it’s both comforting and healthy, I like the fennel addition to it.

Love this! Fauxlognese is a genius name for it – and you wouldn’t know on first glance that it wasn’t anything other than a big bowl of meaty bolognese sauce. Pasta really is the ultimate comfort food in colder weather (heck, even in warm weather!), and those lovely thick ribbons of papardelle (best pasta!) look amazing. Will definitely be saving this for a rainy day! <3

Thanks, Claudia! Why is it that almost every pasta sauce or, uh, topping, tastes better with papardelle? Is it the eggy-ness? The shape? The incredible OCD satisfaction that comes with being able gather a single ribbon into a wide, flat coil on your fork? I mean, it’s probably all of the above, but seriously – papardelle4lyfe.

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